Who Knew An Old Wine Bottle Could Be So Important

 

                In the backyard of my grandparents’ house is a place where a line of trees used to sit. My grandparents are still there – in the same house – but the trees are no longer standing. Neither is the treehouse that those trees used to form. And neither are the children who spent their days in those trees, having long since grown up. But one thing is still there in the ground where that tree house used to sit: An old wine bottle with rolled up pieces of paper inside.

                My grandparents have 13 grandchildren, but the younger cousins have always been closer to each other than the rest. At my grandparents’ house, with my cousins, summers were a time of days spent in our treehouse. The treehouse belonged to me, my siblings, and my youngest cousins. It wasn’t a treehouse in the traditional sense. But in a line of tall pine trees on the edge of my grandparents’ property, the space between two trees was the perfect hideout. Covered on all sides by the branches of the pine trees, the treehouse had a sense of privacy, allowing the space to feel like another world that belonged to us.

When I was ten years old, in our treehouse, my brother, sister, youngest cousins and I buried a time capsule. I don’t know where the idea to make our own time capsule came from, but we wanted to speak to our future selves through the letters that we put in the time capsule. There are still, to this day, letters addressed to our future selves buried in the ground.

Me, my brother Steven, my sister Marissa, and my cousins Andrew, Rachel,
Heather, and Jason. This picture was taken in 2019. We've come a long way since
 we were kids tracking dirt into my grandma's kitchen after burying our time capsule.

            Even as children, we felt the need to remember who we were at that point in time. But in our minds, this could not just be done through pictures. Our way of documenting who we were – involving a wine bottle and a place that was special to us – was much more fun. I remember this about our time capsule: We wrote about our inside jokes and our lives at the time. The games we played and the nicknames we gave each other also felt like key pieces of information to share in our letters. But we shared these aspects of our childhood, hoping that we’d go back to find the time capsule one day, and that when we did, we’d find a piece of ourselves.

There are many variations of time capsules. Time capsules have been launched into space, sealed away in chambers, and buried in backyards, but the characteristics that define a time capsule are that the contents are objects or documents of significance, and that the time capsule has a set date it is meant to be opened. While silly drawings, nicknames we gave each other, and details of our days spent playing house and watching movies may not be considered important documents to most, to me, my siblings, and my cousins, these small things that we may forget with the passage of time are important.

                I wish I had a picture of our time capsule for you, but I don’t. I refuse to dig it up until everyone who contributed to the time capsule is together again – though this happens at least every Thanksgiving and Christmas – and until we have waited the allotted time.

The date that we agreed upon to open our time capsule was 20 years from the time we buried it. Hopefully, one day in 2030, the seven of us will come back to that spot at my grandparents’ house, where our treehouse used to be, and find out what our childhood selves have to say. Maybe I’ll come back to this blog post in 10 years just to give an update on the time capsule – even if no one reads it – I think this story needs some closure.

To learn more about the theories behind why people make time capsules: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/time-capsules-futurism/401327/